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Monday, 5 March 2012

Facebook's Timeline

Facebook has
launched their new timeline visual
approach to their user profiles. Initially I was not taken with the new lay-out
but I have since begun to like it. It is certainly a big change from the
existing profile lay-out. The lay-out of old seems to be so bland and boring
now.

A nice feature on the timeline is the cover. This graphic is
like the book cover to your profile and is a nice big space to show a picture
of whatever you want compared to the small profile picture we have had for so
long. It is still good to see the profile picture has remained but does take on
a slightly less important role now.

The rest of the page is divided into two main columns by a dividing
line, representing the passing of time, hence the timeline look and feel. This allows
to include milestones or life events and you can record your life’s history
easier than ever before.

All those links you used to have on the left hand side of
the page have not disappeared they are just displayed elsewhere. There are now
a couple of tabs displayed just under the cover picture. These tabs can be
expanded by clicking on the little down arrow on the right hand side. What this
means is that only three tabs will be displayed at any given time. This gives a
bit more life to your profile as the tabs rotate through.

If you have a post that you wish to make more prominent you
can select the post and highlight it. This will make your post appear across
the entire page and give it more presence.Also posts that have more comments / shares get a bigger portion of the
page. It is a nice way of seeing at a glance which post got the most action.

The timeline is now available to those who have Facebook
pages for their businesses or other reasons. The mandatory cutover date is 30
March 2012 to the timeline for pages. The timeline for pages will affect
businesses in a big way.

Business will be able to place more branding images on the
page now, think of a big Coca-Cola image on the cover picture and the bottle of
Coke as the profile picture. Businesses will be able to make use of the
milestones feature by way of promotions, specials, product launches. The will
be able to build the brand better and engage with customers.

The ability for a page admin to take a message and turn it
into a private messaging session with a customer will allow far deeper
communication than ever before. Marketers will need to re-think their strategy
on which tabs display above the ‘fold’ as this will be the first thing
customers will see when landing on the business page.